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How-To Geek

Want to play emulated games on your Wii? How about DVD playback? Here’s how to use the SmashStack exploit to hack your Wii with the latest system menu and enable all of that and more!

And yes, in case you are wondering, this does work with the latest version 4.3 firmware update.

Before we get started, it’s important to mention that this guide will modify the software on your Wii, which will void the warranty, and there’s a chance that you could make your Wii console unusable if things go wrong. We didn’t have any problems hacking our own Wiis, but your mileage may vary. Be sure to read the entire process carefully before starting.

What You’ll Need

The SmashStack exploit requires – you guessed it – Super Smash Bros Brawl in order to execute it, as well as one GameCube controller, and you can borrow both from a friend or find them cheap online.

You’ll also need an SD/SDHC card for all of the homebrew (“home brewed” apps) you want download—I’d recommend at least a 1 GB card to make sure you have enough space. It’s also a good idea to check out the Wiibrew Compatibility Page for your SD card, in case you want to ensure maximum compatibility.

Let’s Get Started with Hacking the Wii

There’s quite a few stages in this process, and you should read through everything before beginning to make sure that you’ve got a full understanding of everything that needs to be done.

Update Your Wii Firmware

The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you update your Wii to the latest version, which as of this writing is version 4.3, through the System Menu. Do it now, so you don’t have any issues with the rest of the process.

Prepare Smash Bros

In order for the SmashStack exploit to work, you need to make sure you don’t have any custom stages in Super Smash Bros Brawl saved.

If you play Brawl, you can backup all of your stages onto an SD Card, then move all of its contents onto your computer for safe keeping until after we’re done. This includes the default custom stages and downloaded stages, so if you don’t play Brawl normally, you will still need to either delete or move those stages.

Make sure that your Wii is stage-free before continuing.

Get the Hack Ready

To actually perform this hack, you’ll need to download, extract, and move the hack onto your SD card using your PC. Here’s the file that you need to download, and we’ve provided multiple mirrors just in case one of them goes down:

Pop the SD card into your computer and download the SmashStack exploit and the HackMii Installer (version 0.8 at the time of this article), both included in the zip file. Then you’ll need to move the files like this:

Unzip the Smashstack.zip file and copy the Private folder to the root of your SD card.

Unzip the hackmii_installer.zip file, and copy the wiiload folder and the boot.elf files to the root of your SD card.

It should look like this once you’re done:

Perform the Actual Hack

Time to get things started! Put in the SD card into your Wii and load up Super Smash Bros Brawl.

All you have to do is open up the stage editor, and it automatically executes the exploit! You should see a black screen with text that will eventually look like this:

Press the 1 button when prompted and you’ll see what you can install onto your system.

BootMii is a boot loader, and is primarily only useful for Wii’s that were bought sometime before mid-2008. In concept, it’s similar to GRUB/LiLo, but the shining quality is that it allows you to backup your Wii’s system memory so that you can restore it if things take a turn for the worse. It’s primarily for more advanced functions that most people don’t actually need, so we’ll skip this.

Either way, hit continue and go ahead and select the option to install the Homebrew Channel. Let it do its thing and you should see the following screen:

Install the HomeBrew Browser

Pop that SD card back into your computer, and let’s install the Homebrew Browser, which is a graphical repository that will allow you to browse for various apps, download, and install them right from your Wii console! You’ll need to perform the following two steps, using the files that you downloaded earlier:

Unzip the homebrew_browser_v0.3.9.zip file (from the zip file we provided earlier) and move everything into the apps folder you just created.

Now stick the SD card back into your Wii. Be sure your Wii is able to connect to your Wireless network, then launch the Homebrew Channel. You should see something like this:

Click on the Homebrew browser with your Wii remote, and you’ll get a screen that looks like this:

Don’t panic. The Homebrew Browser is just caching some images for the apps you can browse and download. Once it’s done, you’ll be able to browse lists of apps.

Click on any app to see more information about it and install it.

Setup DVD Playback

To play back DVDs and other media files, we’ll take a look at MPlayer CE, which can play back media files from your SD card as well as standard DVDs. Click on Media to open up the media category, scroll down until you find it, and select it.

Here you can see details like the author, the version number, the version date, and ratings. Click on Download to begin the installation process.

To quit the Homebrew Browser, bring up the menu by hitting the Home button on your Wii remote. Here’s a screenshot of MPlayer CE in action:

Other Applications You Can Install

You aren’t limited to just playing back DVDs with the HomeBrew channel—there are quite a few other apps you can install. Here’s a short list to get you started:

Most of the emulators will require copying ROM files into a roms folder within the emulator folder on your SD card, but every emulator will be different, and you should read the WiiBrew Application page to understand more about how each one works.

Just to show you that it does in fact work, here’s an action shot running The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:

Important Note: Don’t Update Your Wii

It’s very important to note that once you’ve hacked your Wii, you probably shouldn’t allow the firmware to be updated anymore, or else your system could stop functioning or have problems.

Head into the System Menu and make sure that your console isn’t going to check for updates, and don’t install any if you are prompted to—at least not without reading through the WiiBrew site to make sure the hack will continue to work.

Have you tried hacking your own Wii to play emulated games and applications? Would you recommend it to others? Share your experiences with your fellow readers in the comments.

It’s not illegal to distribute the HackMii installer, but the team behind it (Team Twiizers) don’t want it mirrored on other sites. You can always get the latest HackMii installer on bootmii.

Note [READ THIS, IMPORTANT!!]: Wii’s bought after summer 2009 can’t play DVD’s anymore. You won’t be able to play DVD’s nor backups. (Technical details: They removed the DVD function from the DVD drive on the newer type DVD drive called D3-2).

Note; If you want to play DVD’s on a program that doesn’t support “IOS58″ you will need DVDX (only available for Wii’s before Q3-2009).

You may also wish to look at a tool released by X-Flak called ModMii (http://gbatemp.net/t207126-modmii-for-windows). It can legally acquire all the files nessessary to modify any version Wii, upgrade/downgrade to a particular firmware, populate your sd card with common apps like usb loaders, media players, etc, and generate step by step guides to hack your wii

I hacked my Wii a long time ago using an old hack called Banner Bomb. It worked fine, but a year later I bricked my Wii by moving some file I didn’t know anything about. Hack your Wii, just don’t do anything you don’t understand without instructions.

Also I wouldn’t update to the new revision of 4.3 because there are reports that the 2nd revision of the system menu deletes the HBC and any other form of modification. Also if you need to be on 4.3 I suggest using a program called Pimp My Wii to update the latest ios without losing the homebrew channel.

Nice…it worked perfectly. Should also mention that if you have anything on the SD card, your should probably remove it completely off before starting or your Wii will hang and throw this annoying buzz sound.

When I open the stage editor, nothing happens. It just stays at the stage editor screen. Not only that, but I can’t do anything. I’m stuck there until I power down the Wii. No annoying buzzing sound, just the stage editor song continuing, but I am stuck.

I cleared my 2Gig SD card prior to doing all of this. I already knew how to use Smash Stack to load up Brawl hacks, which works fine for me. I wanted to use the HBC however and following these instructions, it’s not working for me. 4.2 on the Wii. Please help, thank you.

Grap your external hard drive and use wbfsmanager (http://wbfsmanager.codeplex.com/) to format it to a readable Wii system disk.
Start usb loader and put a original gamedisk in the DVD drive.
Now choose to install a game. The game wil get backed up to the usb drive and after installing the game will be playable from the hard drive.

So eject your game disk and put them away safely. You game play your game backups now from the harddrive (which the advantage of faster loading !)

ok, so i follow all of your steps, i have wii with 4.3, and when i get to hackmii install it shows on ur site both hbc and bootmii can be installed, well it shows me that hbc can be installed and bootmii can only be installed as ios. also at next step when config comes up in hbc apps, i get error, “read error -116 occurred. retrying. any ideas?

Error -116 is indeed a networking error. It means that the homebrew browser cannot connect to the proper website to download the various files it needs to function. If your wii’s Internet connection is fine, it may be that the website is down. If you go to the homebrew browser website, download the latest version, and manually place it in the correct folder on your sd card, it may solve this problem. The newer version has built-in mirrors.

Hey, rctgamer3, are you absolutely sure about the no-playing of DVDs and backed-up games on Wiis purchased after Summer 2009? Is there any other identifier I can go by to make sure my Wii does/does not fall under this batch? I bought it in December of 2009 and was all prepared to initiate this exploit. Totally disappointed now if I find I can’t take part after all :(

Had the some problems, but I just took the individual files from within the homebrew_browser folder (boot.dol, icon, loop, settings) and placed them in the apps folder. Also, I downloaded version 0.3.9b from codemii.com.
Hopes this helps.

You can play backups on your Wii, just not burnt ones. Nintendo fixed the bug that made it possible to play burnt games, so you’ll have to use a kind of USBLoader, or a WODE (wodejukebox.com) to play your games from a hard-drive.

About watching movies, i think it’s possible now, but you’ll have to do some more stuff (easiest to do on 4.3, if you are on 4.2 or lower use IOS58 Installer first, then reinstall HBC)

1. Press the home-button on your Wii-Remote in the Homebrew Channel and check which IOS it’s using. If it isn’t IOS58, go to the HackMii installer (the installer thingy with the scam warning at the beginning), and reinstall the Homebrew Channel (Uninstall, then Install HBC). Now check the IOS the HBC is using again. It should be IOS58 v****.

2. If you don’t have mPlayerCE already, get it from the Homebrew Browser thingy. You should be able to watch movies now :)

About the Homebrew Browser errors, if it doesn’t work, try downloading the latest version, see below.

Hey Guys,
I bought my wii a year ago and ther version on it is 4.3U.
I had hell of time searching and doing every instruction to hack my Wii for HDC but no luck.
i’m using 2g Kingston SD and downloaded almost all game exploits like yougi etc..
when i go into my SD i can see the game exploit there but when i copy/move from SD into my wii system game wouldn’t show up there.
Can someone let me know what is going on? Can u describ it step by step?
Tnx.

You’re doing something wrong :) but I’m sure you know that. Considering I have 4.3 up and working my first question would be what does your SD card look like? I mean what files are on there and where are they located?

Next how far into the process are you? Do you have the homebrew channel working yet? Lastly what type of external hard drive are you using?

Conor Duffy ~ your suggestion and link were PERFECT!!! Totally easy to follow and now I have a softmod wii and didn’t have to pay some dude to do it and learned a lot in the process ~ Thank you so much for your helpful post!!!!! Copied below:

I got stuck at the -116 error when loading the homebrew browser. After much reading I ended up going to http://www.codemii.com/download/ and downloading the latest version of the browser per YatriTrivedi’s suggestion. Once I had replaced the older version with the latest in the apps folder of my SD card it went right past the -116 error and loaded fine.

To anybody that’s having a problem with the 116 error go to http://www.codemii.com/download/ and download the latest version of the browser. Replace the old file and it will work, much thanks to LostBrew for making that suggestion.

to the two above my post:
I had this SAME issue. I had just bought a brand-new Wii and rented the super smash brawl. Apparently I had never chosed to create a save file for it on the card. After I did so AND deleted the files mentioned in the tut, it ran perfectly. It was freezing and making a noise in stage builder without executing anything.

Awesome instructions very easy to follow. I was getting the 116 error but found the solution thanks to LostBrew and Jeff!!! Thanks Nintendo for making you jump through F’n hoops to play a damn DVD!!!!!

Awesome tutorial. Easily the simplest one around. Just softmodded my wii (4.3U). I used a 2gig microSD using a Kingston SD adapter.
Folks who can’t bring up the exploit screen via the stage editor – make sure you delete (or backup to SD card) ALL the custom stages, even the stored ones.
Also, for HBB, download from the 0.3.9c from codemii as previously suggested.

I’ve installed everything with the most up to date versions, and I’ve got a 4.3u, but for some reason I still get that 116 error and it won’t connect…HELP! The little wireless signal icon in the HBC is lit up, but the frog one next to it isn’t…idk if that helps…

You can use the new letterbomb. Takes minutes to do and no errors at all! You only need an sd card that can be half a megabyte and after download wad manager and download wads and use wad manager to make them programs on the menu not needing anything to run them! (wads are virtual console or wiiware games)

Okay. So I have a new boot1 4.3u wii….i have installed homebrew channel but not yet homebrew browser. I have a friend that has a softmodded wii and about 30 games backed up to a usb harddrive. My question is….. Do I need bootmii installed on boot2 in order to play those games. Or can I just download usbloader and good to go?